The Assumption of Mary

Yesterday was the Feast of the Assumption of Mary in the Roman Catholic Church. Most Protestants have a habit of looking askance at this kind of attention given to Mary, the Mother of our Lord. To some degree, I understand… but only to some degree.

 

However, I struggle with this part of Catholic dogma. Pope Pius XII wrote: Scripture portrays the loving Mother of God, almost before our very eyes, as most intimately united with her divine Son and always sharing in his destiny. (Munificentissimus Deus) I don’t know what to make of this. Pius, as, I suppose, every pope thereafter, says that this is all rooted in scripture. But I don’t see it so clearly.

 

Now, I have to admit that there are probably tons of things that are really and truly there in the scriptures that I don’t see. I admit that I’m not the sharpest knife in the scriptural drawer. But it seems to me that if the infinitesimal things pointed to in the scriptures are the source of this kind of dogma, what of other things like when Jesus says Do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. (Matt 23:9)

 

I am not, by any stretch, condemning the Catholic Church on these issues.  In fact, I am very much pro-Catholic (although I am not – yet – Catholic myself). I’m just trying to understand.

 

That Mary is exalted so highly in the Roman church is, I think, generally not a bad thing. That Mary is almost ignored in large sectors of the Protestant church is. And I have heard it said that the kind of attention that some Catholics give to Mary is not required of all Catholics.  Indeed, it seems a Catholic can not give a high degree of attention to the Mother of God and still be considered a “good Catholic.”  But we’re talking dogma, here. The bodily assumption of Mary is something the Roman church holds to be every bit as authentic truth as the hypostatic union, the dual nature, of Christ… and, apparently, just as scriptural.

 

Does the Orthodox Church accept the bodily assumption of Mary as dogma (or whatever their equivalent of dogma is)?